Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI) represent 70% to 90% of all TBI cases and their incidence has more than doubled in the past years. Patients who suffered a mTBI can experience persistent symptoms for a few weeks up to over a year post-injury, which could result in functional disabilities. In Quebec, three months post-injury, patients at risk of chronic symptoms are referred to rehabilitation centers so they can receive specialized services by a multidisciplinary team. However, long waiting lists are common and often make timely access to rehabilitation services impossible. Waiting lists management and patient prioritization are not standardized practice and are often based on opinion of one person. Optimizing waiting list management for rehabilitation services is crucial for mTBI patients and an adapted decision support tool (DST) for patient prioritization could be an interesting solution to help waiting lists management for those patients. The aim of this project is to implement a prioritization DST for mTBI patients in three Quebec trauma rehabilitation programs. To achieve this goal, a survey of stakeholders (patients, clinicians, decision-makers, researchers) will be conducted using the Delphi method until a consensual list of prioritization criteria is obtained. These criteria will be included in the DST-mTBI to facilitate and standardize the assessment of patients' needs. Based on this evaluation, patients will be assigned to a dynamic list according to the consensus-based criteria. DST-mTBI will then be implemented in three rehabilitation settings in the province of Quebec. Changes induced by this DST-mTBI will be measured on patients (TBI symptoms, anxiety, depression, satisfaction with services) and clinicians (attitudes and sense of clinical utility) using a pre/post design. This project proposes a significant paradigm shift in waiting list management from a time-focused approach to a standardized approach based on potential impacts on individuals.